Tag: huldah van wyk

It was with great sadness that the village of Nieu Bethesda said goodbye to one of their long-time residents recently. Huldah van Wyk has been a part of the Owl House and the Owl House Foundation for more than a decade and has made it her life’s work to keep the house and garden in good repair.

Huldah van Wyk. Photo by Sarina Engelbrecht

Huldah has spent the last 13 and a half years in Nieu Bethesda after buying her house, the old Pastorie in Martins Street, in 2001. She got involved with the Owl House as soon as she moved into the village. She was a part of the Owl House Foundation board of directors for 11 years and served two terms as vice chairman and two years as chairman.

Her love for the Owl House started long before her move to the village and Huldah has been a Friend of the Owl House since 1989 and especially enjoyed getting newsletters while she was still living in Johannesburg.

“The best feeling is knowing that you can make a small difference and help to preserve Helen’s artwork, the garden and her home, over the years for others to enjoy.” She also really enjoyed the teamwork of the board and sharing their passion.

She was the brain and driving force behind the founding of the Helen Martins Museum, which is now housed in the Owl House office building in Martins Street. “I’ve always wanted to started a small museum for Helen. At the time Peet van Heerden was the chairman and I was vice-chair. I made the proposal to the Owl House board and immediately got the necessary support and made some funds available.”

She immediately set to work and got a local builder, Jan-Peet Steynberg, to do the building and suggested what it should look like, what to paint and bought the cupboards and tables herself. She painted the sun on the wall and the museum was ready to be filled.

Huldah explains that the idea at the time was to use the stoep, the only available space, and turn it into a shop. Another local resident, Pierre Offerman, built the shelving and was meant to build two more cupboards. Unfortunately Pierre passed away before completion of the project, but the Offerman family donated two beautiful cupboards to the museum after he passed away.

“I did all of the work myself. Maybe I am one of the those people who have to be in control of everything?” she jokes. “But it was a privilege! I went through hundreds of photographic slides manually to decide what to have printed and framed.”

She was especially happy when doing her research when she found a slide, a colour photograph, of Helen in the garden where the statues were still painted. A lot of the colours in the garden have faded over the years and unfortunately there is very little recorded colour photos of the garden in that time.

From there she set out to make copies of the most important documents, letters as well as Helen’s unsigned will.

There is also a lot of letters left over from the years Helen lived in Nieu Bethesda. Interestingly Helen asked in her will, which was never signed, that her correspondence be destroyed, but this wish was never fulfilled. The will in itself is an interesting story. (Read more here.)

“There were way too many letters and I had to choose which ones to use and which parts.

“It was then that I found a hidden letter in one of Helen’s kitchen drawers. I used this too. My goal was to show that Helen was very educated, clever and a very musical person.”

Huldah got to go through the cupboards and choose clothes from the boxes held in archive. “Here my goal was to show that she did indeed have a sense of style and detail. She worked in old clothes, and that was what most of the residents saw her in, which led to many people’s perception of her unkempt appearance.”

Unfortunately the clothes have since been stored away and is not part of the display anymore.

It is interesting to note that the locals remember Helen in her later years with very rough hands from working with cement and the children of the era, whom she loved deeply and would always kiss hello, said she had a moustache! Some of her clothes were rather exceptional and Huldah placed a photo of Helen wearing the same dress next to it. (Editor’s note: My own grandmother, Freda van Heerden, tells of Miss Helen visiting “town” in a fancy red dress after her sister, Alida, passed away. Apparently Helen had inherited all her nice clothes and ended up wearing them when she would go to Graaff-Reinet.)

Another interesting chapter in Huldah’s involvement was the unlocking of Blue Beard’s room under the grapevines. This room was locked over the years, although no one is sure why. “I asked Peet van Heerden, the then chairman, if we could open it as a birthday present for myself! Inside there were a myriad of boxes and bottles of preserved fruits in the bath. It was also here that I found a small coloured mermaid, where all the others are white. It can now be seen in the Owl House.”

Yet, there were some strange moments too … “I had a dream one night that I was walking across the bridge with a group of tourists. I had to tell them that I had no space left in the guest house, but then the strangest thing happened! I suddenly morphed into Helen! In front of my own eyes I changed into her and I said to the guests: ‘Come to my house, I would love to show you my home!’”

In another instance, while Huldah was working on Helen’s things in the Helen Martins Museum, something told her to have a look in one of the potted plants. “It was the strangest thing! My very expensive sapphire and diamond ring had broken and the stones were lying in the plant. I really believe it might have been Helen thanking me for the work I put in. I would never have found it any other way!”

Huldah also found a box decorated with glue and pebbles, or coloured sugar, although the image was unclear. “It was the same method we used as children to make Christmas cards or stars. My theory is that it might have been the inspiration for Helen’s glass on the walls, although we would never know. The box can also now be seen in the museum.

“The name, Blue Beard’s room, has some sinister connotation, but if you look at the floor and the corner cupboard it speaks only of love. It is a known fact that Helen hung her mirrors high, even though she was very short, but here a mirror hangs at her height.”

These are just some of the tales she has to tell of her years being a part of the Owl House. The friends, board and community as a whole will greatly miss her now that she has moved to Jeffrey’s Bay.

As a last thought: Huldah says that the thing that has always amazed her about the Owl House is that people either hate of love it. “No one is ever left cold.”